Narcissism Vs. Democracy

I have a project which is due on Tuesday of next week, so today's post will be short.  But I want to note two things which follow from last week's post.  First, I want to repeat what I said about the role of structure in effective social movement organizations:

In order for a social movement organization to succeed in achieving any goal, therefore, it must have structure.  For the social movement organization to achieve democratic goals, the structure must be both explicit and formal, and it must be formally ratified by each of its members.  That structure must also include a formal, explicit, democratic method of decision-making.  The creation of such democratic structures is not a spontaneous process, but is deliberate, conscious, and goal-oriented.  Movement organizers who create such structures create movements that actually accomplish things.  "Movements" which don't are like an amoeba having a seizure.

To this paragraph I would add that the members of a democratically run social movement organization must be willing to be bound by the results of the democratic method of decision-making.   And this willingness to be bound by the results of democracy provides a key to the motivations behind those people in high places who have launched successful attacks against democracy both in the United States and elsewhere.

For those who have grown used to life as dominant power-holders and whose lives of privilege have produced an unhealthy narcissism tend to regard the emergence of a diverse population as an existential threat - especially if the members of that population have equal access via democracy to the power held by the dominant.  To guard against that threat, the dominant must damage or cripple democracy - through such things as the revocation of voter protections, the sabotaging of national postal services, the selective disenfranchisement of dark-skinned ethnic minorities, and other means.  This is why the American Right has been engaged since 2008 in what appears to be a project to tear the United States apart.  For even when the dominant remove the threat of the powerless by denying the powerless access to pre-established structures of democracy, this is no security to the dominant.  Instead, what is very likely is that the dominant will themselves self-destruct by means of in-fighting among the members of the elite, each of whom is saying to himself or herself that it is better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven.  These elite members will be unwilling to be bound by the results of anyone else's decision-making - even if the decisions are made by the other elites.

Second, in regard to the weakness of "leaderless" movements, here are two more articles to chew on:

• "Analysis: Do 'leaderless' revolts contain seeds of own failure?", Reuters
•  "What Successful Movements Have In Common," Harvard Business Review